Linux is the Engine Under the Hood of Instant On

Instant Gratification With Splashtop

January 13, 2009

By
Paul Ferrill

Waiting for a laptop or
desktop to boot has to be one of the biggest time wasters for the majority of
computer users no matter what the operating system. You would think with faster
CPUs that the problem would just go away, but it hasn't. In fact, if anything,
it has gotten worse. Larger amounts of system memory have only added to the
amount of time it takes the average computer to go from powered down to ready
for use.

The ultimate goal of
computer manufacturers and users alike is to get as close to "instant
on" as possible. While that goal is still a good way off for most
operating systems, it has been achieved for a minimal operating environment and
made commercially available from two vendors. Both vendors take different
approaches to the problem and also take a very different approach to how they
sell their products.

Splashtop is a product from DeviceVM and was
the first to really grab the attention of the laptop crowd. It comes
pre-installed on laptops from Asus, Lenovo and VoodooPC. It's also available on
a large number of Asus motherboards and the Asus Eee Box B202. For the
developer crowd there is a list of the components used in Splashtop on their website along with the statement that they
are building an SDK to make development for the platform easier.

The key to Splashtop's
speed is a special piece of code loaded into the system BIOS. That's the main
reason you don't see Splashtop offered as a stand-alone product. In addition to
the BIOS code there's a small amount of disk space dedicated to the rest of the
Splashtop software. Booting into the Splashtop environment gives you a number
of options including a Web browser, music player, photo manager, chat client
and Skype.